More bad movies on the way

I haven't forgotten about the old Bad Movies from A to Z list. I haven't had much time to watch movies lately, let alone to take notes. But I've got the next few lined up, and as soon as I get around to viewing them, I'll add the reviews.

Someone asked if "Plan Nine From Outer Space" was going to be on the list. After lots of thought and consideration, I decided not to add it to the lineup.

Why?

To start, while Plan Nine is not a great movie, I've seen much worse. Ed Wood might not have had much in the talent department, but God bless him, he loved movies -- even if he couldn't make a good one.

Also, everybody picks on Plan Nine when they talk about bad movies. I honestly don't know that I would have anything new to add.

Plus, I already have a P movie picked out, and I don't think I've ever seen a review of it. Of course, this being the Internet, I'm sure someone will find it and chastise me.

Super-fiends

File this under "I really shouldn't have laughed that hard..."

Do something, Fruit Pie the Magician!

Here we see my pal, Fruit Pie the Magician in action. Clearly, not his finest moment.

Voodoo Moon

There are certain actors whose work I almost always enjoy. Consequently, I'll often watch things based solely on the appearance of one of those actors.

So when I found out that Jeffrey Combs will be in the upcoming release from Anchor Bay, "Voodoo Moon," it got my attention. Heck, I caught an episode of "CSI" the other day with him in it. His first listed credit on IMDB is a small part in "Honky Tonk Freeway," a movie from 1981 that I remember solely because a little kid (Peter Billingsley of "A Christmas Story" fame) pees on the side of the road, which I found supremely funny at the time. I should add that I was about 6 or 7 at the time.

Anyhow, here's the synopsis from the press release:

Twenty years ago, a demonic massacre in a sleepy Southern town left two young siblings as the lone survivors. But for adult Cole (Eric Mabius) and his younger sister Heather (Charisma Carpenter), an obsession with their parents' satanic slaughter has lasted a lifetime. Now through Cole's psychic connection with a group that includes an outlaw biker (John Amos, "The West Wing," "Die Hard 2: Die Harder"), a traumatized cop (Jeffrey Combs, "Re-Animator") and a mysterious healer (Dee Wallace , "Cujo" and "The Howling"), vengeance is about to take a very unholy turn. Tonight they will all be brought together in a place where depraved secrets are exposed, legions of the damned are unleashed, and the final battle between Good and Evil will be fought beneath the Voodoo Moon…

As Abraham Lincoln once said, "For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like." That's exactly how I feel about the movies I watch.

Avast, ye swabs!

Well, here it is, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and if you need any pirate-like information, head on over to The Original Talk Like a Pirate Day Site.

And here's my pirate name this year:

My pirate name is:

Bloody Jack Bonney

Every pirate lives for something different. For some, it's the open sea. For others (the masochists), it's the food. For you, it's definitely the fighting. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Not just for the few...

The perils of watching old TV commercials and public service announcements: I catch myself humming this song and have to tell someone what it is.

A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind...

There are things I shouldn't think about early in the morning. Late at night, just about anything goes. But in the morning, I find that I have to be careful not to overload the circuits.

I presume this is why having an early morning math class didn't pan out much for me.

Math in general is not one of my strong suits, so I was pleased to discover that I was able to keep up with Imagining the Tenth Dimension.

I want to learn more about tesseracts, but my brain refuses to cooperate. It's frustrating to want to learn about something that is just beyond your reach. I can almost wrap my head around it, but I'm just missing that "a-ha!" moment.

Maybe if there was a model made of Lego...

(via WFMU's Beware of the Blog)

Merrily we roll along

I just told gently suggested to my wife what her next crocheting project should be. Because hey, who doesn't need the prince from Katamari Damacy to decorate your desk?

I do, however, draw the line at this. Cool it may be, but I don't think I can really pull that off.

(via Boing Boing)

Save the clock tower Fruit Pie the Magician!

I like to support worthwhile endeavors when possible (read: when it requires little actual effort on my part).

So when I learned of the Save Fruit Pie the Magician campaign, I figured I'd try to spread the word. Please pardon the crudeness of my Sharpie likeness.

I always liked Fruit Pie the Magician. Better than Twinkie the Kid, at any rate. Don't get me wrong; The Kid is a nice enough fellow, but he just seems a little too eager, you know?

Fruit Pie just seemed a little more badass, even despite being saddled with the name Fruit Pie. He was also a magician, but I think he just conjured up fruit pies for little kids to eat. Now think about that. He is a living breathing fruit pie, and he gives little kids smaller replicas of himself (nonsentient, of course) to eat. And not once does he look a little uneasy about that.

A few years ago, when I used to get a Hostess fruit pie almost every day at work, I'd cut out the images of FPtM from the empty packages and tape them to my monitor. Within a few days, it looked like a miniature shrine.

These days, Hostess has changed the wrapper for their line of pies, and our boy Fruit Pie got the heave-ho. Instead, they use a bland design. Clearly, no one at Hostess asked me what I thought. If they had, not only would FPtM be on the wrappers, but they'd also be making the pudding pies again.

The new wrapper, which I presume was designed to make them stand out on the shelves, has (for me, anyway) the opposite effect. I keep thinking they're the store brand or other off-brand pies.

Compare this:

with this:


Way to go, Hostess.

Schmucks.

The line broke, the monkey got choked...

I've been listening to "It: The History of Pop Music" on XM Radio over the past few weeks, and it's been pretty cool.

What's even cooler is that the XM site has PDFs of the decade-by-decade playlists so you can see what's coming up or what you missed.

Today covered the early 80s, so I've gotten to hear such gems as Styx's "Mr. Roboto" and "The Clapping Song" by Pia Zadora. That last song was stuck in my head for years until I heard a snippet of it on one of those "I Love the 80s" specials on VH-1.

Why it was stuck in there, I have no idea. It's certainly not because I liked it. My brain likes to play tricks on me, I guess.

Dumb ol' brain...

I'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs...

OK, I just saw a Sara Lee commercial that used "The Happy Happy Joy Joy Song" from Ren and Stimpy.

Discuss among yourselves.

And while we're at it, how many people thought it was "Nobody Does It Like Sara Lee"? Someone who is married to me (who will remain nameless) would undoubtedly feel better if she wasn't the only one.

Don't toss those cookies

As anyone who has read this blog before can attest to, my brain works in mysterious ways.

Every time I hear Phil Collins' cover of "You Can't Hurry Love," I am reminded of an afternoon at the Naval Air Station in Alameda. My dad was in the Navy Reserve at the time, and we were on base for reasons I can't remember. It didn't involve cartoons or comic books, so it was above my radar.

I do remember stopping at the little store there because they were one of the places at which I could always count on finding my favorite Super Heroes cookies.

Each box was emblazoned with the Super Heroes logo that, under a deal my young brain could scarcely fathom, was shared by rivals Marvel and DC Comics. I knew this because I had a puzzle of the Marvel heroes with the same logo.

On that afternoon, my brother and I each got a box, and as we got in the car to go back home, "You Can't Hurry Love" was playing on the radio. We opened our boxes and gave a running commentary on how many of which superheroes we had.

The cookies themselves were a fairly bland, graham crackery affair, but honestly, they could have put dog poo in some superhero-themed packaging and my brother and I would've wanted it.

In later years, I found out that one of my favorite comic book artists, George Pérez, supplied the artwork for the boxes. And as my obsession from about eighth grade through high school was to collect as much of his output as possible, that made me wish I had saved a box or two of those cookies.

More recently, I'd seen pictures of the cookies on the Internet, and on a whim, checked eBay, even though I'd done so many times before without success.



I ended up getting three boxes of cookies for about 11 bucks. Two of them were the slightly later Supergirl boxes that tied in with the box office bomb, but the cookies inside were still the same. The other box featured Pérez art on front and back.

Like many of my eBay acquisitions, the cookies remained in storage, seen only when we were moving to a new place and I had to make sure they didn't get thrown out by accident.

Then I wondered what the cookies (now in the realm of 22 years old) looked like. I decided to (very carefully) crack open one of the Supergirl boxes since I had two of them.

Of all the cookies, only about half were still intact, which, as I recall, was about the same as when they were new. Nothing was quite as disappointing as finding only the head or legs of a hero you didn't already have in the box. Well, until they stopped making them, anyway.

In this box, I found Wonder Woman (in two slightly different poses), Superman, Supergirl,


Penguin, Batman (in two different poses), Batgirl and Robin.

The second Batman cookie, now that I look at it, reminds me a bit of this picture of Batman. You be the judge:

I was a bit surprised that the cookies still seemed to be in good shape. I wasn't quite adventurous enough to taste one, as they smelled like 22-year-old cardboard, but I appreciated their lack of deterioration nonetheless.

This is the part where I usually have some pithy thing to say that sums up the whole post, but since the whole thing was about opening a 22-year-old box of cookies, I don't think I have anything profound to say other than that I need a hobby or something.

Sigh.

International Astronomical Union to Pluto: "You cold busted."

Alas, poor Pluto.

After about 75 years of being the ninth planet, everyone's favorite celestial snowball got busted down to dwarf planet status. Now we're left with Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as official planets.

I've seen some complaints about how the old mnemonic we learned in school -- along the lines of "My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas" is now obsolete.

I always found it easier to, I dunno, remember the actual names of the planets. I think I was a weird kid, though.

I'm not against mnemonics; they're pretty handy. I've always been partial to "Eskimos Go Bananas Drinking Fresca" over "Every Good Boy Does Fine." You can guess how long ago my music class was based on the inclusion of "Go Bananas" and "Fresca."

In old issues of "The Flash," one of the enemies -- The Rainbow Raider -- was named Roy G. Bivolo. I read about that long before I learned about Roy G. Biv representing the colors of the natural spectrum.

My friends and I came up with quite a few mnemonics in my high school science classes, most of which I'm, uh, not at liberty to share, if you know what I mean.

Am I bummed out about Pluto getting sent down to the minors? No, not really. I always thought it had a goofy name (So to speak; the cartoon dog was named after the planet, according to Wikipedia). Besides, it's going to be decades before Pluto is removed from the collective knowledge pool of the general public.

If nothing else, it will be the best-known dwarf planet, which admittedly is sort of like being the coolest nerd (so I hear), but it's something.

YouTube resurrected the video star

I hear YouTube wants to someday have every music video ever made online for people to watch. I guess they mean they want to do this in cooperation with the music labels, as there's already skillions of videos on YouTube.

I figured I'd see what I could find.



"Calling All Girls" by Hilly Michaels. This is what I think of when I think of old MTV. I actually caught this on ALTV, one of the specials "Weird Al" Yankovic did on MTV back in the day, and it looks like that's where this clip came from. Now that's a music video. Awesome.



"Building a Bridge to Your Heart" by Wax. Another one I saw on ALTV back in 1987. It's a catchy little tune.



"We'll Be Right Back" by Steinski and Mass Media. Wow, 3 for 3 for videos I saw via ALTV. This particlular clip was from a showing of Night Flight. Homina! Homina homina!

Should you want to check some videos out on your own, there's always http://www.1500videos.com/. They've done the dirty work of finding and indexing, and you just click and watch.

And here's a quick "How well do you know Jeff" quiz: When the video below came out, what do you suppose was the reason I watched it every time it came on? Those of you readers who happen to be my wife are ineligible to take the quiz. And unless you want to explain why you're watching cheesy music videos, you might not want to check these at work.

Well, turn it up, man...

Oh jeez.

This commercial is solely responsible for my violent dislike of the song "Bread and Butter." I probably wouldn't have lilked it much anyway, but this commercial made sure of it.

This clip is for my brother.

Freedom Rock. If there was a spot in which stations could possibly air this commercial, they did. Even if there wasn't, they did. Every time I hear the beginning of "Layla," it's all I can do not to ask whoever's listening with me, "Hey, man, is that Freedom Rock?"



Ah, I miss K-Tel Records commercials. I have quite a few in my vinyl collection, but not this one. I loved how you could get a random assortment of artists one just one K-Tel collection. I have one that has Sylvers, Kiss, England Dan & John Ford Coley, Gary Wright, Alice Cooper and Heart as the first six tracks. Yikes!

"I'm not a drama critic."

Back in my "I'm a total Star Trek geek" days, Universal Studios used to have an attraction called "Star Trek Adventure" in which happy park-goers could get picked to play small parts in a short Trek episode. They'd videotape the various parts and splice it together to show at the end of the attraction. If you were one of the people selected, you could buy a copy of your performance.

I went with my family in the summer of 1989. It was the one attraction I wanted most to check out, so we made sure to get at the very front. In no time, there was a sizable crowd behind us.

Finally, it was time. Someone came out to cast parts for the mini-movie. I stood as tall as I could, hoping to get picked. The guy kept looking right at me and then right past me, just like most of the girls at school did. I saw him point in my direction.

Oh jeez, did he just point at me?

Nope. Close, but nope. He picked my dad. Well, that was cool -- at least I'd know somebody in the thing.

They were still picking people, which meant that I still had a chance.

They picked my brother. (Cue sad trombone: wah-wah-wah-waaaaaaah...)

Apparently, 14-year-old dorks were not on their casting sheet.

Instead I got to watch my dad get transformed into a Klingon and my brother into an engineering trainee. It was neat to see how everything got put together, and we bought a copy of the thing as a souvenir, but it didn't change the fact that I didn't get picked (an unbelievable injustice), and I was pissed off in that way that only 14-year-olds can manage.

In fact, if you look at pictures of our trip, you can tell which ones were taken before Star Trek Adventure and which were after. The post-STA pictures feature me in a state of scowliness, which is saying something, considering I wasn't a very smiley person in the first place.

It was the second time I'd been so close to fun at Universal. On my first trip, there was a thing where they showed how a normal person could seem as strong as the Incredible Hulk, whose show was one of the big hits. Yes, it was that long ago.

They needed volunteers for a demonstration, and my hand shot up in a flash. I was excited beyond belief when the person in charge pointed right at me. I looked to my parents to smile at them, and as I got ready to stand up, the kid sitting next to me leapt to his feet and ambled down to the stage.

So I spent the next few minutes watching him pretend to lift a car and other Hulk-like feats.

(Wah-wah-wah-waaaaaaah...)

There were a couple of versions of the Star Trek Adventure, apparently.

This was like the one my dad and my brother were in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWIpmJO9GN4.

This is a different one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISihtIMvRSc

I was just kidding...

I was going through a box of clips from when I used to write a humor column at the paper where I used to work.

One column was full of gag ideas for TV shows. Not surprisingly, I came up with the titles first on most of them (Nun of the Above, Jake and the Batman).

But one caught my eye:

The Lighthouse

In this "Smallville"-inspired outing, we see the teen years of Aquaman. As teenager Arthur Curry, he is unuaware of his legacy -- the throne of Atlantis. In what foreshadows his career in "The Superfriends," he does a lot of stuff wrong, is generally useless and always has to bum rides off the other kids in school.

Keep in mind that this was printed in March of 2002.

Little did I think they'd actually do it.

Ophidians on an Airborne Conveyance

I've been reading about it for about a year, and now it's finally here. I knew I'd have to say something about it eventually.

I'd like to see it, but I rarely get a chance to hit the theaters.

I figure lots of people are a little "Snakes on a Plane"-d out, but I say it was worth it just to have a message from Samuel L. Jackson sent to my mother.

What's going on?

As you can see, there are a few changes going on around here. Things may look different in the next week or so. Blogger has added a few new features, so I'm trying them out. I'm also doing some other stuff, so if I hose something up, let me know.

Hey, look! It's my Technorati Profile!

Here we are now -- entertain us

A little while back, I bought a ukulele at Cost Plus. I'd been wanting to noodle around with one for a little while; I really like the sound.

Plus, I figured I could learn to play "Ram On" (or "Grandma" if you are my son) by Paul McCartney.

The only drawback thus far is that the nylon strings are murder to keep tuned. I keep meaning to pick up some metal strings, but I keep forgetting.

But after seeing the following YouTube clip on Ask Metafilter, I'm inspired to take the uke off the shelf and really learn how to play it.